


You used to be so careful

by Threadbear



Series: So it is [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Infidelity, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25659982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Threadbear/pseuds/Threadbear
Summary: Severus didn’t just love him, he was in love with him. Sad wasn’t it? Didn’t it just make your skin crawl?
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Series: So it is [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759291
Comments: 12
Kudos: 103





	You used to be so careful

For as long as he could remember he had always done things the hard way. Though he could not exactly recall doing this consciously, looking back that seemed to be the result anyway. He could not recall even a single thing that had come easy to him.

Except Potter. Potter always came easy. He smirked unpleasantly to himself for thinking of that. He wished Potter were here so he could tell him, but Potter wasn’t here. Potter was hardly ever here. With Potter he had hardly even had to try to make him come (though he did, he had worked that boy out as if he were the most complicated and delicate of potions). Daddy issues, Severus told him, never one to sugar coat the perfectly obvious. Get fucked, you ugly prick, Potter would say or words to that effect. He relished calling him all the things he wouldn’t have dared say to him in school, all the things Severus couldn’t give him detention for any longer, or make him scour a classroom full of cauldrons for. Though he would sometimes pull him over his knee and make him push his pants down and spank him till he was sobbing to be fucked and that perfect pink prick of his was digging painfully into Severus’s thigh.

Apart from the sex though, nothing was easy for them, not a single thing. It was his fault. He knew this, he just did not know how to do it any other way.

He was ruining the boys life, that much was true. Every time he let him in that door, every encouraging look, every word. Every discouraging one come to think of it, those times he would tell him off, voice dripping with loathing and Potter would leak clear through to his trousers.

Fuck me like you would have done at school, Harry had pleaded with him at the start in a hard little husky voice, so he had complied, would push him over his desk and tell him about all the things he’s ever done to annoy the living shit out of him. I’ve been so bad, Harry would moan, you need to teach me a lesson. Was it any wonder he kept doing it? Could anyone blame him?

Are you mine boy? He would growl at him and he would lie and lie and say he was. He would never be his, not if he lived a thousand life times over.

There were three words he didn’t say, though he did. Desperately, hopelessly, the whole sad, miserable lot, the whole mess. The boy was right, he would know, he’d said it to him in every way except in words after all. He loved him in a terrible, aching, breathless at two in the morning kind of way. He didn’t just love him, he was _in_ love with him. Sad wasn’t it? Didn’t it just make your skin crawl?

He just had a feeling that if he said it he wouldn’t be able to keep letting him walk out that door, by keeping this one thing back he can just about manage it.

After Potter had knocked up the Weasley girl the first time they’d decided they would cut it off. It had lasted all of three months after the child was born. Ginny had asked him round to tea to meet the baby - gods wasn’t it just awful? What they were doing to that sweet girl? - and Severus had rubbed the hem of Harry’s sleeve between his fingers when she was out of the room and caught the desperate longing in the boy’s eyes.

Sometimes he thought about if the child were his. He thought of Harry dewy and swollen with his child, and him a proud and fierce father, their child would be formidable, it would have his brains and Harry’s face and maybe a bit of his cunning thrown in to make sure it could make its way in the world, it wouldn’t have to fight for every little thing, a Potter child would have the world at its feet. Such a grotesque and terrible fantasy, though those seemed to be the only ones worth having. He could probably manage it, if he were determined enough. God knows Harry had talked about it in bed more than once. Stupid boy. No sense of self preservation.

After the second child they don’t even bother, he only saw him maybe every few weeks anyway. The child that bore his name. You shouldn’t have done it, he snapped at him once they were alone and Potter’s lip twitched. I thought you might be pleased. Said with venom, like most everything they said to each other, now and always.

Blithely expecting him to be pleased with him having someone else’s child was so fucking Potter he could scream. He probably did scream, after, when he was alone.

Fucking careless, was all he said to him about it.

“Pass the bottle babe.”

The trouble was the bottle was in Severus’ hand, not his wife’s. Potter’s hand reached out to him claw like.

Severus didn’t react, of course he didn’t, he spoke the language of deception, lived it his whole life. His sweet guileless boy, this didn’t come naturally to him, if it wasn’t for me we would have been found out years ago, he’d so often told him.

“Potter do I look like your wife to you? That may be the strangest compliment I’ve ever received.”

“Oh right.” Harry blustered. “What did I say?”

He took the bottle from Severus’s outstretched hand and gave it to a fussing Albus as Ginny looked on. Severus thought he saw a flash of something in her eyes, it bothered him. What else had she seen?

“Fucking stupid, Potter.” He said later at his home, his miserable bloody house with its mouldering old furniture and greying curtains. This stupid fucking house, it was no place to bring his beautiful boy, he deserved the world and all he could give him was this fucking house and a cock up the arse once a fortnight.

“Can you not Potter me right now, I feel bad enough.”

“Snape is the only thing you call me from this point on _Potter_. I’ve half a mind to make you call me sir.”

“You do,” Harry commented and slid his arms about his waist.

“What did your wife say?” He murmured, Harry’s hot mouth against his neck was as distracting as always.

“I don’t think she even noticed.” Severus doubted very much that were true.

“You need to stay away from me.”

“How?”

He didn’t know either.

A few times they did manage it. Once he made his house unplottable for six months. It had been a pain in the ass and he had to change to mail orders only for the potions he sold which some of his more shady clientele had not liked but it had worked, for awhile.

Potter’s jaw twitched when he saw him again, he said nothing but he looked at him like if he were to open his mouth it would be to yell.

The children ran screaming between them and presents were ripped open and vast quantities of sugar consumed. Weasley and Granger eventually herd most of them outside and Severus wondered what he was actually doing there. He should have left it another six months. It was just that people were starting to ask questions.

He had escaped upstairs to find the loo and have a fag without anyone judging him when a pair of hands pulled him through a door and slammed it shut.

“Potter—“

He was shoved onto the closed toilet seat lid and straddled roughly. He’s heavier than what he was when they had first started. Thighs more solid, thicker around the middle.

Severus let him hit him. It made a loud satisfying slap and he blinked as his cheek throbbed. He hoped it made him feel better.

“Don’t ever do that again.” The boy’s voice shook.

He thinks of telling him you shouldn’t provoke dangerous men in bathrooms but he knew, he was Harry bloody Potter, he just didn’t care. Though the day Severus could lay a finger on that boy would be the day he finally offed himself.

He slapped him again. “I hate you.”

When he bought his hand up a third time Severus caught it and held tight. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not. You’re not.” He ground against him with lips pressed hard to his own and his free hand wound painfully in his hair. “Say it, say it. I’ll kill you. Say it.”

“I love you.” He said it like a sob. “I love you like air. I would let you kill me if that’s what you needed.”

“Yes. We’re the same. We need each other.”

“I would kill for you. I have killed for you. I’d do it again.”

Harry banished their pants god knows where and suddenly he was fucking into his spelled-slick opening and they’re panting and grasping and there’s no silencing charm on the room.

It was over quickly and they pulled their clothing on while Harry shot him looks like daggers.

Come tonight, he said before the boy slipped back downstairs to the party, I’ll fuck the angry out of you. He smoked with his head out the small window and wondered why every single thing he did to extricate himself from the boy ended up entwining them deeper together.

He went home and took the unplottable charm off the house.

The next day a knock on the door turned out to be Granger. “Fuck.” As soon as he saw her he’d known.

“I think I knew that day years ago, at Luna’s party.” She said.

“Who else?”

“How should I know? Maybe I’m not the only one to have worked it out.”

“Maybe so.” He said.

“You know you have to stop.”

“Obviously.” He was about to say you can’t take him from me but that sounded unhinged.

“I’ll tell her.”

“I won’t let you.”

“If you really cared about him you’d stop.”

“I know.”

“How can I not tell her?”

“Do you really want to be the one to destroy his life? His family?” He gave an ugly sneer.

“You’re cruel. You haven’t changed have you?”

“I never said I had. People assume what they want.”

She doesn’t say what does he see in you, but he can see her thinking it clear as day.

He thought about it after and he doesn’t like the answer.


End file.
